Handling the main card play-by-play for the UFC’s return to Boston is our man Oliver Chan (aka “O Chan”), who will be hand-delivering “UFC Fight Night: Shogun vs. Sonnen” live results after the jump beginning at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT. Refresh the page every few minutes for all the latest, and keep the conversation poppin’ in the comments section. Thanks for being here.

Since we know how much you guys love a good old fashioned conspiracy theory, try this one on for size: Everyone in the middleweight division is still scared shitless of Uriah Hall and will do anything within their power to avoid fighting him. Yes, despite the fact that he dropped a unanimous decision to Kelvin Gastelum in his UFC debut, Hall seemingly cannot find an opponent brave (or healthy) enough to face him at UFC on FOX Sports: Shogun vs. Sonnen on August 17th.

First, Nick “mumblegumblemurglegurgle” Ring was scheduled to face Hall at the event. Then we posted this video, then Ring suspiciously went down with the first “blown asspussy” in UFC history. Ring was quickly replaced by Hall’s fellow TUF 17 alum, Josh Samman, and everything seemed to be back on track. Until yesterday, that is, when Samman likely realized that he would never be able to complete his Ethnography of Women and Violence in Post-war Guatemala thesis while comatose. Subsequently, Samman has also been forced to withdraw from his fight with Hall, paving the way for a certain UFC veteran (and Boston native) to reclaim the spotlight…

Though details are sketchy at this time, MMAJunkie reports that Ring has been forced out of his scheduled match against Hall, and will be replaced by Josh Samman — a fellow TUF 17 vet who was eliminated by Kelvin Gastelum in the show’s semi-finals, but returned at the TUF 17 Finale to score a second-round TKO against Kevin Casey. So it’s like Hall and Samman never left the show, and are now competing for the TUF 17 bronze medal, while Dylan Andrews sits in the corner shouting “what about meeeeeeeee?!?”

A note to all future training partners of Uriah Hall: Should you find yourself in a light sparring session with the TUF 17 finalist and pound-for-pound baddest mofo in TUF History (allegedly), SHY AWAY FROM THE HEAD KICK, MIRKO.

If you choose to pull such an insolent move, however, you will likely find yourself doubled over on a sweat-stained mat moments later, your vision tunneled, your bowels released, praying for sweet, sweet Death’s tender embrace. “Dear Lord,” you will whisper as the fluorescent lights above begin to pool beneath your eyelids, “I am ready. I am ready to be shed of these mortal bonds. Deliver me towards the soil, almighty one.” But Death will never come, and you will instead be forever known by your other training partners as “Shitkick” or “Hallsbitch” or “Ground-n-Brown.”

Poor Nick Ring must be similarly releasing his bowels right about now. As Ving Rhames once said, “Now I realize there are some things worse than death, and one of them is sitting here waiting to die.”

Saturday night, Kelvin Gastelum put the brakes on perhaps the biggest Ultimate Fighter hype train in the show’s history, Uriah Hall, by winning a split-decision at TUF 17 finale but today he told MMA Fighting that just a few months ago he was close to hanging up his gloves. “Before [TUF] I was struggling. I was about ready to quit MMA for a while, and just get another job because obviously I wasn’t doing well financially,” he said.

“I was like, man, if I don’t make it, it’s going to be a while until I’m back in a cage somewhere. Luckily it worked out all in my favor.”

Hall had knocked out and sent multiple fellow contestants to the hospital during his reign of terror on the TUF 17 set but Gastelum was able to shut down the striker’s dangerous offense for the most part. Promoter Dana White had said Hall was the scariest guy in TUF history before the fight and afterwards, suggested that Hall was, in fact, mentally broken and not mean enough.

The new TUF 17 champion wasn’t afraid of the hype going into Saturday’s fight and he doesn’t buy the hype now that he only managed to win because Hall suddenly became a shell of himself, psychologically. It was hard for Uriah to look great because Gastelum wouldn’t let him.

“People are saying he didn’t perform, and I guess I would have to agree,” Kelvin said.

“Mostly because I was putting the pressure on him and actually bringing the fight, which it what a lot of the guys didn’t do. Adam Cella was the guy that brought the fight [during the season] until he stayed stationary the last couple seconds and got caught with that kick. Then the other guys were just scared. I wasn’t scared, I brought the fight to him…it worked out in my favor.”

Every UFC main event has to be about something, and when there aren’t any titles on the line, things tend to get pretty creative. Leading up to the main event of the TUF 17 Finale, the talk surrounding the bout focused on the friendship between competitors Urijah Faber and Scott Jorgensen and how it may affect the bout. Whether the two were actually the close friends that the media made them out to be was completely irrelevant; which is good, because Jorgensen revealed during fight week that they weren’t.

What we were left with was a bout between the number two and number seven ranked bantamweights that played out as expected. This isn’t to say that the fight wasn’t entertaining (it was), but Jorgensen was outgunned early and often by Faber before “The California Kid” sank in the fight ending rear-naked choke in the fourth round. It was closer than the gambling odds indicated it would be, but not exactly a close fight, and though Jorgensen managed to mount some offense of his own, he never appeared to be any real threat to Faber.

The bantamweight division is very top-heavy, which perhaps more than anything explains why Urijah Faber is seemingly always one fight away from a title shot. The gap between the top five guys and the rest of the division is wider than most fans would care to acknowledge, and it showed last night. Still, I’d rather watch Urijah Faber fight Michael McDonald than watch him get crammed into yet another title fight. I doubt I’m in the minority here – at least among hardcore fans.

Handling play-by-play duties for our TUF 17 Finale liveblog is Alex Giardini, who will stack up results from the FX main card broadcast after the jump beginning at 9 p.m. ET. Refresh the page every few minutes for all the latest, and please share your own thoughts in the comments section.

This post is ostensibly about the fighters who weighed in yesterday for tonight’s big TUF 17 Finale event. We will not, however, judge you if you skip right to the twenty five minute mark to watch Miesha Tate and Cat Zingano, who for some reason, both decided to weigh in wearing bikinis (do you, ladies. No complaints here at the CP office.).

If you didn’t get enough Zingano from her open media workout which was ostensibly about giving a taste of her workouts but was really about stretching… Oh, the stretching….anyway, she’s in this video along with Meisha and some other guys who we guess are fighting, too. I don’t know.

We heard something about a couple guys named Urijah (what are the chances of that, huh?) fighting, a Brazilian Sasquatch with a black belt on a come-back tear and a do-or-die featherweight match up on facebook between some straight bangers named Cole and Bart. Who knows?

If you watch the above video, you’ll probably end up learning more than we know. So, go for it.